Occupy London: a fading fad?

Outside St Paul's Cathedral

When the Occupy London movement pitched its tents in the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral in London last October it sent shockwaves through the suit-clad City workers to the whole country. Building on the momentum from other protest camps worldwide, such as Occupy Wall Street, the protesters outside St Paul’s denounced the capitalist system and the ensuing inequality. Commentators were keen to interpret the resurgence of protest movements as a portent of an imminent sea change in western society, perhaps fuelled by nostalgia for the social ferment of the 1960s. These predictions proved to be unfounded, or in any case premature. The excitement aroused by the camp soon died down as legal proceedings with the City of London Corporation got under way to ultimately result in the eviction of the protesters on 28 February. The Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park in New York had already been evicted back in December and Occupy Bath cleared the tents in Queen Square the same month. As Laurie Penny from the New Statesman wrote, “the political establishment is making its message clear, in the manner of a hostess trying gently to expel the last unwelcome guests at the end of a party: stretching, ostentatiously tidying up and talking loudly about how cold it is outside”. The question now is, what have these movements achieved? And will they be remembered?

To look for a concrete achievement one must first start from the objectives, and these were rather like a crème brulée: seemingly sturdy on the outside only to reveal themselves soft after you dig a little. Occupy London sought to fight corporate greed and “make [their] voices heard against the crisis which the banks have created”. Some very lofty aims indeed. But fighting corporate greed is not as clear cut as it seems, whilst making one’s voice heard need not take 5 months. Joan Smith, a human rights campaigner, believes that “once you’ve met your aims, it’s crucial to take your cause forward and I’m not sure continuing to stay outside St Paul’s Cathedral takes these protesters’ political objectives any further”.

Perhaps, then, we are wrong to look for concrete aims in the Occupy London protesters and even the movement worldwide. Michael Chessum, one of the leaders of the student protests, believes that developing concrete demands now would be premature. One must not interpret “fighting corporate greed” as an insular objective, for it is connected to a deeper societal malaise with the capitalist paradigm that has dominated western society for three decades. It would also be wrong to focus excessively on the “we are the 99%” mantra, for whilst the protesters do call for an end to the expanding schism between the super rich and the rest of society, they feel that the system has failed them as a whole, of which social inequality is simply one aspect. The Occupy London movement has thus been a “standing reminder that the force of capitalism may not be what its champions say it is”, raising awareness of the failings of capitalism simply through their presence and stimulating more public debate on the issue.

Awareness and debate may die down, however. Occupy London’s eviction did not elicit the same interest as its inception. Taken alone, the movement has neatly blended into the plethora of groups that make up our civil society, and its “anti-capitalist discourse has not disappeared so much as soaked in, like a stain into a carpet”. Yet context is key; the resurgence in social tumult over the past year signals that people are prepared to stand together and denounce what they perceive as an unfair system. This perception is strong enough to instigate protest camps and is unlikely to fade away simply because the tents have come down. Occupy London has not been an agent of change, but it has highlighted the extent of popular resentment with capitalism, whether founded or not, and is a prelude of more to come. We may not be in an interregnum between the crisis and a new system, but the discontent is there and clearly discernible. Meanwhile, life in St Paul’s churchyard will return to business as usual, replete with tourists and City acolytes.

Mammon's Bells: The Church of England's Fraught Relationship with the Protesters

“The alarm bells are ringing all over the world. St Paul’s has now heard that call” said the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, after the debacle surrounding St Paul’s cathedral and its fraught relationship with the protesters camped outside seems to have subsided for the time being. One might point out that St Paul’s has heard that call rather belatedly, to say the least.

About 200 people and dozens of tents have been pitched in the churchyard since October 15^th to protest against “corporate greed and inequality” in the City, inadvertently sparking a massive public debate about the Church’s position in society. The Church’s first response was to close St. Paul’s for a week, because of health and safety concerns.  The next episodes in the saga saw the resignations of the canon chancellor Dr Giles Fraser because of the recourse to legal means, and the dean of the cathedral, the Right Reverend Graeme Knowles over his mismanagement of the case. This rapid succession of events seemed to prompt the sharp U-turn in the cathedral’s position, which in the space of two days announced the suspension of legal action against the protesters.

The convoluted evolution of the debacle has led many to question where the Church of England stands when it comes to the competing demands of God and Mammon. The location of St. Paul’s in the middle of the financial centre of the UK could not be more apt to highlight the situation. It professes to be a friend of the poor and marginalised in society, thus leading one to assume it would throw its full weight behind the protesters’ cause, however vague and ill-framed it might be. Its initial actions, both the closure of the cathedral and the resort to legal means, belie this traditional stance. The week-long closure to the public could not contrast more stridently with Dr Chartres’s later overtures to the protesters. It visibly showed a disinclination to engage with the protesters and more importantly to kick-start a public discussion on economic justice and the broader societal issues regarding the role of finance, all within the church’s remit. As Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University has said, “it’s not the business of the Church to be a set of economists. What the Church can do is to invite people to think thoughtfully, be honest and to ask the right questions”.

However we may be going too far in claiming that the Church of England actively sought to shun its role in helping the most vulnerable elements of society by attempting to evict the protesters. Nor does it follow necessarily that the Church ought to position itself squarely in either the establishment or anti-establishment camps. Church historian Stephen Tomkins argues that this debate stretches back 2000 years to the birth of Christianity itself. The Church has ambivalently been both a radical and conservative force in society, thus making it too diverse a phenomenon to be on one side or the other. Furthermore, from the article on the Financial Times written by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, it transpires that he sympathised significantly with the protesters in backing a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions. It is regrettable that he did not speak out sooner to assuage the public ire. Thus whilst the Church’s fudging response was indeed shambolic and plain incompetent, it is inaccurate to lambast it for having forgone its duties to society. In excessively prioritising and mismanaging the practical issues of health and safety it allowed the broader philosophical debate to run ahead, scuppering its chance to be at the forefront of it.